


what grows from the fallen branch

by lollystar888



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Timelines, Gen, I'm bad at tags and will add more as i write rip, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parallel Universes, The Spiral, The Web - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27583918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollystar888/pseuds/lollystar888
Summary: Reality fractured during The Great Twisting, and the result was an emergent diverging timeline.Somewhere, a boy named Dominic Swain is struck by a bolt of lightning.Somewhere, Sebastian Adekoya reads a book titled The Boneturner's Tale.Somewhere, a doctor gives Gerard Keay an early diagnosis and a treatment plan.Somewhere, Jonathan Sims does not become The Archivist.Somewhere, some place, things are different. Not better. Not worse. Just... different.
Kudos: 12





	what grows from the fallen branch

Reality fractured during The Great Twisting, the failed ritual of the Spiral which robbed one poor Michael Shelley of all he was and could have been. 

The fabric behind the world had been twisting, twisting, twisting and twisting, time and space nothing but clay in the hands of a malevolent god who wanted nothing more but to gorge on the attempts of the pitiful creatures within to understand creation unravelled. Mr Shelley's unwilling sacrifice was enough to disrupt it, certainly, but the scars of what had started to happen remained. And war wounds on the universe were not pretty, the ebb and flow of time disrupted. Distorted. Corrupted. 

The simplest way to describe what happened in the aftermath is to imagine a damaged branch falling off the tree of all that was.

And so from the tree, a new branch grew.

And so from the fallen branch, a new tree grew.

The number of trees was now a total of two. The number of universes was still a total of one, as they were still identical. 

They remain so for just the most miniscule of moments, before the remnant of the shattered unreality clustered at the heart of the Spiral discharged through both trees, both universes, leaving parallel scorch marks down the bark. 

In both the trees, both universes, the remnant gathered in the sky and manifested as a single bolt of lightning. The Spiral was alive in those twin bolts and they desperately wanted to feed, to satiate the hunger. They both sought targets. 

And in both universes, two children are playing in a field in the rain. There is a crash of mighty thunder as a lightning bolt strikes a child and brands them with a lichtenberg figure rooted in elsewhere and nowhere.

The child's name is Michael Crew.

The child's name is Dominic Swain.

The total number of universes is now two. A series of similar events happening in unison in two completely different ways. 

Most of the entities, the gods, the unknowables, the indescribable fears - they took a moment of interest and then drifted away. After all, food is food. And more food is just more food. 

The entity known to some as The Web, the weaver of all strings, took more interest in the development. This was new. Opened up more possibilities. To pull the same strings on the duplicate puppets and have them go in different directions… how curious. 

The entity that was-not-yet (some whispered it as The Extinction, but it did not yet know itself) looked upon it with something that was not yet intelligence and was not yet thought.

But if it _had_ been capable of thought, it would probably have been thinking something a little like this:  **_finally_ ** **. something I can work with.**

**Author's Note:**

> This idea just kinda hit me out of nowhere and now I'm excited to write it. Please leave a comment to let me know if you enjoyed it!!


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